Communications of the ACM
An edited collection of advanced computing news from Communications of the ACM, ACM TechNews, other ACM resources, and news sites around the Web.
From ACM TechNews
Using Adversarial Attacks to Refine Molecular Energy Predictions
MIT researchers find new way to quantify the uncertainty in molecular energies predicted by neural networks
From ACM News
Identifying Artificial Intelligence 'Blind Spots'
A novel model developed by MIT and Microsoft researchers identifies instances in which autonomous systems have "learned" from training examples that don't match...
From ACM News
Team Invents Method to Shrink Objects to the Nanoscale
MIT researchers have invented a way to fabricate nanoscale 3-D objects of nearly any shape. They can also pattern the objects with a variety of useful materials...
From ACM News
Wireless Communication Breaks Through Water-Air Barrier
MIT researchers have taken a step toward solving a longstanding challenge with wireless communication: direct data transmission between underwater and airborne...
From ACM News
How to Control Robots with Brainwaves and Hand Gestures
Getting robots to do things isn't easy: Usually, scientists have to either explicitly program them or get them to understand how humans communicate via language...
From ACM News
Fundamental Equations Guide Marine Robots to Optimal Sampling Sites
Observing the world's oceans is increasingly a mission assigned to autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs)—marine robots that are designed to drift, drive, or glide...
From ACM News
Engineers Design Artificial Synapse For 'brain-on-a-Chip' Hardware
When it comes to processing power, the human brain just can't be beat.
From ACM News
New Scaling Law Predicts How Wheels Drive Over Sand
When engineers design a new aircraft, they carry out much of the initial testing not on full-sized jets but on model planes that have been scaled down to fit inside...
From ACM TechNews
Toward Mass-Producible Quantum Computers
Researchers have developed a new method that could help lead to the development of practical, diamond-based quantum computing devices.
From ACM News
Teaching Robots to Teach Other Robots
Most robots are programmed using one of two methods: learning from demonstration, in which they watch a task being done and then replicate it, or via motion-planning...
From ACM TechNews
Explained: Neural Networks
Deep learning is a new name for the neural-networking approach to artificial intelligence.
From ACM TechNews
Finding Patterns in Corrupted Data
A new set of algorithms developed is capable of efficiently model-fitting probability distributions to high-dimensional data.
From ACM TechNews
Toward Practical Quantum Computers
Researchers have taken a step toward practical quantum computing with a prototype chip that traps ions in an electric field and directs laser light at each of them...
From ACM News
Scientists Program Cells to Remember and Respond to Series of Stimuli
Synthetic biology allows researchers to program cells to perform novel functions such as fluorescing in response to a particular chemical or producing drugs in...
From ACM TechNews
Exploring Networks Efficiently
Researchers are hypothesizing that the study of ant colony behavior could lead to improved network communication algorithms.
From ACM News
How to Stay Anonymous Online
Anonymity networks protect people living under repressive regimes from surveillance of their Internet use. But the recent discovery of vulnerabilities in the most...
From ACM TechNews
Researchers Discover New Way to Turn Electricity Into Light, sing Graphene
Researchers have discovered a sheet of graphene can cause an electric current to surpass the speed of decelerated light and rapidly generate a focused beam.
From ACM TechNews
Self-Driving Cars, Meet Rubber Duckies
A course in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory aimed to create a fleet of duckie-adorned self-driving...
From ACM News
Robotic Consensus
Planning algorithms for teams of robots fall into two categories: centralized algorithms, in which a single computer makes decisions for the whole team, and decentralized...
From ACM TechNews